Bounty Systems

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Sat Mar 18 00:28:21 UTC 2006


Ken Causey wrote:
> Now of course you and others have offered bounties as such a form.  I
> think bounties represent a wholly artificial form of return that, even
> if succesful, cannot be self-sustaining.  What I mean is that a bounty
> is a form of coercion meant to influence the current path of development
> in a direction for which there is not otherwise sufficient interest for
> the development to occur without said bounty, then when the bounty ends
> development will falter.  At worst this could result in pushing Squeak
> in a direction so far away from where the community, as a whole, wants
> to be that it kills the community.

+10. There is significant danger if money is thrown some way because 
"Squeak ought to do X, Y, or Z" without sustained support in the community.

Personally, I think bounties work best if they are used in the context 
of an existing support network. For example, I would think that a bounty 
for, say, "making loading in Monticello faster" might work because there 
is a community of MC developers/users out there, it's a small, tangible 
(and easy to measure) improvement and it's (most importantly) not in the 
critical path of anyone (if it doesn't get done, so what).

Contrary to which I'd think that a bounty for, say, "use Oracle instead 
of an image for persistence" (apologies to those out there who think 
this is a bad example; I'm trying to make one up here since those that 
come to my mind might step on a few toes...) wouldn't work very well. 
It's (probably) a big project, the community by and large hasn't shown 
much interest in this area and once it's over it's not at all clear if 
the result has any lasting effect (since it's not clear if there will be 
maintainers for such a project).

> So what else can we do:
[... snip ...]
> Individually, we can 'lead from the front'. In other words, lead by
> doing and hope that a sufficient number of others follow our example.

Unfortunately, this is very hard for anyone who is looking at bounties 
as a potential solution - because a bounty is (at least in our 
community) a clear sign that says "I can't lead that process" (otherwise 
why don't you?).

> In the need category:
[... snip ...]
> We can remind those that express a need that their need would most
> quickly be met if they participate in the development required.

Amen.

> Anything else, if effective, artificially move the community away from
> where it would have naturally gone, so it is very unlikely to be
> self-sustaining.  Otherwise, it's simply a waste, not having acheived
> anything.

Yes.

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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